Victor
by Lostkun
Summary: A closer look at a character most people would just rather hate: Professor Hojo.


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Final Fantasy VII, and all related characters and trademarks, are property/copyright of Squaresoft, Ltd. No infringement is intended by this work of fiction. The author, however, retains intellectual right to the story's premise: please contact before linking to or posting elsewhere.  
  
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"Victor"  
  
Author: Jessica Orr  
  
"Medical science does not seal the earth, whose nether creatures seep out, hair by hair, disguised like the smoke that dispels them."  
  
- Maxine Hong Kingston -  
  
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When I was very small, I once stole a magnifying glass from my father's desk drawer. I took it outside, to the courtyard of the modest estate my family owned in Nibelheim, and to which I have often returned over the years, now and again, when nostalgia or discretion, or both, demand it. Crouching at the edge of the cobbled pathway, where the aesthetically arranged rocks met their neighbors the front lawn's floral greenery, I focused the lens on the object of my curiosity: ants. They were so small that my eyes -- very human still and even then hidden behind spectacles (of such gross and pretentious size that I was often mortified by them in my youth, and often ridiculed for them by my peers) -- could not make out their figures except as insignificant specks, so many in number that they seemed more a whole together than apart. Together, they were a mass of formless, globular lines that spun out all over the pavement and into the grass. Beneath the glass, however, I could see them for what they were, mimicries of individuality.  
  
I was fascinated. I did not notice until a few moments later how the sunlight, transposed through the lens, became a focal point for the invisible searing force that before my boyish, uneducated eyes burned the insects to so much ash. The simple elements of nature, innocent and harmless when devoid thereof, transformed by human hands and human means into a power such that it smote the ignorant and insignificant unawares, like a hand of god that, with nary a thought past brief ingenious invention, crushed and destroyed, simply overpowered --  
  
This, I learned, was science.  
  
Science is the foundation of all true power, for it is through science that you understand the beginning of all things. Once you begin at the beginning, all things are possible, even simple. It is simply a maze one must transverse prior to execution; there is no maybe in whether or not you will execute, but merely a matter of having the patience and knowledge to get there. Even magic is science. Few realize this, or at least are too foolish to acknowledge it. Certainly some of the most powerful materia springs from the Planet, but the Planet is a construction of science, molded first by her own erratic elements until her earth-spawn gained intelligence enough to mold her in return. Science is the acknowledgment of absolute rule, the degradation of faith and fate.  
  
Without science, I would never have achieved my rank in Shinra Electric's executive committees. Only the bastard son of its previous president remains at the top of its hierarchy, but soon he too will fall, as will the rest of them, as I strip them of the illusion that they had any foundation upon which they could stand. They have nothing. All their petty schemes, their idiotic gambits for power and prestige over one another... -- Only I, never bothering myself with their political farces and continuous ascertainment and reiteration of supposed social dominance, the one excused as "eccentric" and "strange," deigned the lowest of their party for never indulging their self-absorbed tripe...  
  
Only I will be the one to rise above them all, without ever stooping to their level first, never playing their assumptions to the opposite. They think of science as a tool; underestimation will reduce them to cinders, along with the rest of this pathetic, filthy city. My gift to my son... His mother sugared his importance with a promise, and I, his father, will see that promise kept. Her ambition, his ambition, and mine -- they are all one and the same, one path, means to a single end. A family legacy, if you will. My son, the instrument through which to dine on sweet honeydew and drink the nectar of the gods... She has told me how, shown me how in the deep, cluttered recesses of my recollections.  
  
His true mother, mind you, not the impressionable young trollop that bore him; her significance is no more than a midwife's, a medium through which he passed from hypothesis to result. There was... --I had no use for Lucrecia after she lost her mind. It was something of a pity, though not much of one -- She was more intelligent than is common of her lot. She understood, initially, the greater, deeper meanings of our project. That unlikely development was perhaps why I thought I was in love with her then, two soul-mates united under the pretense of mutual scientific empowerment. What an idiot I was!  
  
Love is no more than a deranged composition of chemicals and hormones; with a crescendo of sexual climax that tricks the human brain into thinking they've just achieved something worthy of note. There was more satisfaction to be taken from the vengeance I extracted from her besotted lover's body and mind than any copulation she and I achieved between the bed sheets. Hate, I am certain, though I have not researched it as deeply as I would like to have -- One must have priorities, after all -- is yet another result of disharmonious bodily reactions. I do not hate him anymore. After all, I won. He is my creature, just as my son is, just as Lucrecia was. How can I hate what is mine, the fruit of my labors if not of my loins?  
  
One does not hate the ants writhing to death beneath the glass. There is only the perverse fascination with the inevitable and their corresponding inability to accept or dispute effectively.  
  
I hear you, Valentine, charging up those metal stairs, your heavy feet striking each step like the descent of a gavel, the sound of the judgment you think is your right to exact against me. Your pulse is a high, thick beat in the knot of your throat. Your fingers itch. You sweat, though you haven't in years, because... You think you are going to kill me, aren't you? You can already see it in your mind's eye, behind those circlets of glowing wine. You're already pulling the trigger.  
  
My fingers are shaking as they hover over the control panel. The foreign chemicals are wreaking havoc on my nervous system. Only She keeps me steady; She is my focus. The true mother of my child, now as much a part of me as She is of him, and all our bastard children, though only he, our firstborn, will be heir to wonders beyond mortal, human ken. She is beautiful. She, I know, is more true a lover to me than Lucrecia ever was. More a mother to our son than Lucrecia ever could be. Lucrecia was -- is, I think, for at times, when She is strong with me, I can feel the dam's presence on the horizon like a frenetic jumble of thoughts, just as I can hear Valentine's heady pulse and my son's patient amusement, leading me to believe that she is still alive somewhere -- always a weak creature, flighty and never quite as predictable as I thought her to be, but in essence a dullard. But there is no pretense of physical struggle with Her; the clumsy, graceless coupling is a thing of the past. I am an old and ugly man, but She has made me young again.  
  
You, too young to know the pain of debilitation, the descent of your own body with the progression of age, cannot fully appreciate the conceited beauty that is youth. You cannot understand the humiliation that comes of finding yourself bent not by burden or carriage, but the simple curvature of your spine, rendering your posture in constant prostration to all whom you come in contact with. You do not know what it is like to lay upon your bed and feel the pressure of the world upon your frame; even in recline, it is an inward struggle for your body remain together. You cannot fathom resenting your peers because they are wasting what you through virtue of your seniority were forced to forsake.  
  
Age is science too, but it is a science I admit inadequacy in conquering. She has corrected this for me, my lovely second self, my formless lover. Ever since Gast dragged Her up from the icy depths in which She had been imprisoned, helpless, all but dead, have I loved Her. She was a beauty to behold. Not even Gast could fully appreciate the possibilities locked within Her frozen flesh, the strength and power that I could read detailed in every inch of every capillary and nerve ending. Even immobile, She crackled with delicious, incredible promise.  
  
She guides my hands when they are too unsteady, whispers in my thoughts and opens my eyes to sights unseen, unreachable. My son is waiting for me in the great beyond, somewhere unfathomable, in the sky and beneath my feet. Now the computer sings to me like an electronic siren, its lyrics composed in binary and encrypted gibberish, a cacophony of melody I was able to decipher when I was but a child -- The coordinates are locked. The name of the city flashes on the screen in blood-red letters, and I can hear Her laugh, Her cold arms winding around me in a wonderful embrace that makes me young again. My son is laughing too. We all are laughing, for soon, soon it will be all over, and this grand experiment will finally reach an even grander end. I have fulfilled my duty as a father.  
  
"Hojo, no!"  
  
They have come. Without turning, I know there is hatred in his eyes, drowning them in blood, a taste for which his demons are clamoring for, that he is all too willing to give them. It was I who bound his soul to the creatures that lay beyond the veil of mortal eyesight. It was a clumsy effort, but successful. That is why I locked him away; it was thought that the demons would consume him in isolation. With Her breath in my lungs, I can feel them on the edges of his thoughts, just as I can feel the emotions steaming from the blonde's, the failed experiment. The bastards of Our unholy union, but now She and I are truly wedded, one and the same. Now it is my body that crackles.  
  
The coordinates are locked. All that stands between them and the computer is I -- and my skin is crawling. This humanoid facade will not last much longer. My skin boils; calmly, with fingers that no longer tremble with age, I reach up and remove my glasses, setting them down on the console. There is no more need for them. It is time to erase the blights of our existence, to destroy the unsavory byproducts so that our first and only heir will succeed to the throne we have prepared for him atop a mound of blood and rubble.  
  
She laughs at me, so softly I almost forget it's Her.  
  
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Author's Note: The title "Victor" is doubly a play-on of words. Victor was the given name of Dr. Frankenstein of Mary Shelley's famous gothic masterpiece, Frankenstein. Victor's surname has since become synonymous with the monster he created, and Hojo is often compared to the movie representations of Dr. Frankenstein - that is, of a deranged scientist obsessed with his own perverse experiments. There are also the obvious ironical connotations behind "victor," considering the direction of game events. 


End file.
